Problems of uncontrolled file transfer may arise in communications among widely dispersed computers. Available bandwidth may vary according to the amount of traffic in a network. Various network connections have varying capacities to handle software distribution or other file transfer. Unfortunately, not every user knows or understands the available bandwidth. Traveling users with notebook computers may have little choice or information about the available network connections.
If a large file is transferred, when available bandwidth is low, the amount of time it would take to transfer the large file could be extreme. This may be annoying or costly for the end user, who may be paying for connection time on a dial-up connection. This also may be costly for the service provider, because a server process may be tied up by one client, and unavailable to other clients, for an extreme length of time. Thus there is a need for a system or a method to detect the bandwidth, and then perform a proper action, depending on bandwidth.